Why Should You Move to a Headless CMS?

Let’s not beat around the bush. Upgrading to a new CMS can be a pain.

Scouring a crowded market for a better option, defending your favorite to internal stakeholders, meeting after meeting to justify the investment and expense… and that’s all before you can even start the actual implementation.

It’s only human to look at such a daunting experience and decide that your current legacy system is fine. Flawed, but fine – and ultimately not worth the hassle.

So you settle for less.

But you deserve more.

Legacy systems: How did we get here?

Old CMS tech, monolithic suites, traditional content hubs – whatever you want to call it, legacy CMSs have dominated the market since the dawn of the digital age. Even today, behemoths like WordPress still loom large.

But seniority isn’t everything. One of the reasons why legacy CMSs are so popular is because they tend to have a set, basic functionality that most people can use. That’s great if you’re trying to launch a website for your neighborhood soccer league, but if you’re launching a massive interactive stadium site like Sydney FC, you’re going to need a little bit more firepower.

Unfortunately, a lot of legacy platforms can’t offer that. The degree of customization, technology integration, and personalization that today’s users expect was simply not taken into account when most legacy systems were created.

Not only does this have a predictably negative impact on your business, but it can wear you and your team down, too. Contorting your strategies around the limitations of a clunky system can lead to slow innovation, poor collaboration, and the stress of missed opportunities.

But is the grass really greener?

Let’s not pretend that upgrading is a walk in the park. It’s a serious undertaking that requires a lot of business resources and personal energy. But don’t let that push you back into the settling mindset just yet.

Because the difference between old CMS tech and a true enterprise content management platform doesn’t just matter for business applications. It also matters for you. Headless CMSs offer everything you need to manage your content the exact way you want and eliminate traditional roadblocks.

Picture it: No more being slowed down by monolithic workflows. No more struggling against arbitrary vendor restrictions. No limits on how far or fast you can scale. Just the exact technology you want and an endless list of possibilities.

Change isn’t always easy. Upgrading to a headless system isn’t the exception. But it’s the turning point to creating truly unique, cutting-edge content experiences that rise above competitors for a bigger, faster market impact.

You deserve better than ‘good enough’. You deserve a headless CMS.

3 reasons to move to a headless CMS

Headless systems break down old-school restrictions for benefits both you and your business will appreciate. Let’s look at just three: speed, agility, and control.

1. Speed

Smaller, simpler websites might not feel this pinch, but it only gets more overwhelming as content volume and complexity increase. By the time you’re managing enterprise-level amounts, it reaches the content version of “death by a thousand cuts” – or more accurately, a thousand delays.

Think about it. How many issues has your team suffered through because they couldn’t make a simple content change without a (very busy) developer’s help? Or reverse it – how much precious dev time is lost helping editors do something as basic as updating a landing page?

It’s not just about the speed of publishing content. It’s also about your ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions. For reasons we’ll get more into in the next section, it’s much easier to integrate new tech and features into a headless system. That means it’s faster too. So while your competitors are still trying to implement a new element into their content management, you’ll already be using it to execute your strategy.

A headless structure also allows you to save time elsewhere. Using a modular content model (such as Storyblok’s Composable Components, devs can create an editor-friendly way to independently reuse and adapt content across all platforms. Couple that with our intuitive Visual Editor, and your content team never has to worry about relying on the mercy of a dev’s schedule to meet their deadlines again.

2. Agility

When the leading legacy CMSs were first emerging, the concept of omnichannel marketing was fledgling at best. The outdated infrastructure means that any attempt to mimic the omnichannel capabilities of more modern, more agile headless options is just that: an imitation. You can try to replicate the functionality, but it’s simply incompatible with the core way legacy systems are built. You’re doomed to fall short.

Scalability issues aren’t limited to new channels and tech, either. Ever had a large, unexpected traffic spike that took your site down when you should have been cashing in on conversions? Legacy systems can’t compensate for that level of variability the way a headless CMS can, so any large-scale opportunities like unexpected traffic can end up being a frenzied panic.

As hinted in the last section, the unique infrastructure of a headless system is one of its greatest strengths. APIs can connect your system to an endless list of channels and tools. This means anything compatible with APIs can be hooked in, effectively future-proofing it even for tech that doesn’t exist yet.

Moreover, APIs allow them to communicate without being directly linked. Any security breach or system failure in one of your programs won’t necessarily take down the whole system. This also makes headless a secure choice as it automatically limits the amount of damage to be done.

What does all that mean in practice?

• Traffic spikes are easily covered thanks to the decoupled nature, allowing you to leverage CDNs and cloud-native resource management to their fullest potential.
• Distribute content to any channel, anywhere, anytime that stays consistent with your user through their entire journey.

3. Control

Humor me for a second – let’s do a thought experiment. Does this website look familiar?

If you said “yes”, it’s likely an understatement. That’s the Hello Elementor theme for WordPress. So chances are, you’ve seen quite a few of the 7.3 million installs floating around on the internet.

…can you already see the problem?

When you use the same generic set of tools with rigid constraints as all of your competitors, standing out is impossible. You need tools that are best suited to your needs to succeed. Or, to put it more simply: If you can’t control what goes into your CMS, you won’t be able to control what comes out of it either.

Headless’s future-proof structure doesn’t just open the horizon for tomorrow’s innovations. This flexibility also gives you the power to create a tech stack geared specifically to your needs. No worrying about vendor constraints or forcing half-baked solutions to get what you need. The possibilities are endless.

Your new dev wants to work in a different programming language? No problem! Have a new automation tool that will help you personalize content no matter how users access it? Just hook it up and start elevating your experiences.

No compensating for functions that a one-size-fits-all package doesn’t include. No paying for features that you’ll never use, but are forced to bundle anyway. You have total freedom to build your website to exactly suit your needs – not everyone else’s.

Joyful Headless: Built different

For small, simple projects, legacy systems have their merits. But if you want a bigger, faster, better tech stack that can be molded to fit scalable, unique digital experiences – headless is the only way to go.

Upgrading your CMS isn’t always easy. But neither are the issues you’re struggling against with a legacy setup – and they aren’t exactly rare, either. From devs to business users, plenty of people have been feeling the legacy pinch. Just ask the team over at Marc O’Polo:

"We were really struggling to work with content. The CMS was part of a bigger monolithic system, and you could see that it was not their key feature. When we built something, we always had to struggle with a workaround."
– Johannes De Zordo, Senior Frontend Developer

"We had to build a list of modules blindly and didn't really know what it was going to look like at the end. It took forever for new people to learn how to manage content." – Sidonie Steiner, Business Development Manager

"We realized we couldn't meet the requirements each week, which was frustrating. Starting with a new software was exciting, but we ended up feeling limited and stopped." – Maria Künzner, Technical Project Manager

So don’t just go headless for your business – you deserve the best CMS experience possible, too. Do it for yourself. Do it for your team.

Because when you upgrade to Storyblok, you won’t just feel the difference.

You’ll rejoice in it.

"Storyblok is a great fit for our needs. Developers appreciate the API-based system and how simple it is to use. Business users also love the interface with real-time preview with the Visual Editor." – Johannes De Zordo, Senior Frontend Developer

"As the Business Development Manager, it's way easier to define new concepts and test the features. The content management system is very intuitive, and as soon as something new is developed, I need no briefing! It makes the whole process much faster and easier for everyone." – Sidonie Steiner, Business Development Manager

"Storyblok is more than just a CMS for us. We've finished projects on time and within budget. I would recommend Storyblok not only to development teams. Project managers and business users can benefit with Storyblok as an easily maintainable CMS." – Maria Künzner, Technical Project Manager